


Marking the Passage of Time

by hoosierbitch



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, M/M, Romance, Slow Build, Soulmarks, Soulmates, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-06 13:59:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5419694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoosierbitch/pseuds/hoosierbitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Epic Love Story of Clint and Phil, as told through other people's soulmarks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marking the Passage of Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [adamsgirl42 (eddiessofa)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eddiessofa/gifts).



> "Clint/Coulson soulmate AU in which the soulmark/tattoo changes with you as you age. C/C soulmarks finally matched up after the events of the Avengers."

The winter after Phil turned seven, his father died.

The tattoo on the back of his mother’s hand, which had been a brilliant fuchsia as long as he had been alive, faded to a dull black and white as his father got sick.

By the time he finally passed, his mother’s mark had completely disappeared; the flower covered by the snow white skin of her hand.

That was not the normal way of things. 

It should have acted the way flowers marks do: withered, changed, bloomed—or, if his mother’s soul was not in mourning, but had been altered, the mark should have changed into something else completely. A book, a staircase, a constellation—anything. Something. 

It never came back. When she looked at Phil her eyes were empty. Nothing in bloom, nothing lying in wait, no hint of a spring that could come after the winter of grief passed. 

Phil’s mark still changed every week or so, the way that children’s marks do, but he watched it more carefully after that.

*

Barney’s first settled mark was _awesome_. A black drawing of barbed wire wrapping around his ankle, so realistic that Clint had thought Barney was about to start bleeding. Then Barney showed Clint his forearm, where, for the last two weeks there had been an infinity sign. 

“It changed overnight,” Barney said. “Hurt like a motherfucker. Woke me up in the middle of a really good dream, too.” 

“Don’t be an asshole,” Clint replied. “It's so cool. Everyone’s going to be jealous.” 

“Mom’s going to hate it,” Barney said, shoving his pant leg back down. 

“Dad might like it though,” Clint said. Maybe.

Barney, as usual, knew better than Clint. Their parents didn’t like it. “Trailer trash kids,” their dad had said, shaking his head at both of them.

Their mother might have said something nice, but her soul was a candle next to her husband's bonfire, and his declaration was all Clint could remember. 

Their parents died a year later, both lights going out, and Barney's hand around Clint's was the only real thing in the world. 

Their first summer in the orphanage, Barney put on a pair of shorts, and Clint saw that his tattoo had grown. The barbed wire wound its way from his ankle up past Barney’s knee. It was one of the biggest marks Clint had ever seen. 

It never occurred to him to wonder what kind of match Barney would find, with a tattoo like that. A woman with wire cutters? Someone with junkyard dogs chasing around their ankles? Clint hoped Barney finds a gardener, covered in travelling vines, but that didn’t seem likely.

It wasn't until the orphanage, when Barney started wearing shorts as often as he could, that Clint understood why he used to hide it. In the daily fight of their new lives, it gave him street cred; it showed he was sharp and hard. Before, when he was more boy than badass, it had revealed something about himself that he hadn’t wanted known. 

Barney was tangled up. Trapped. His mark had started out as a single wire, snagged around his ankle like he’d been climbing over a fence. Now it was the fence.

Clint didn’t like to think about Barney’s tattoo very much. 

(He suspected that he was part of the wire: the jagged knots where it came together, about ready to pierce the skin; or the new stretch of metal curved behind his knee, hidden and wicked and vulnerable.) 

*

Two girls in Phil's intro to bio class find each other on the very first day of undergrad. They reached for a syllabus at the same time and saw each other’s marks: Samantha with a sparrow, drawn in shades of red and brown, and Brayden with binoculars. Both tattoos with completely different content, but drawn in the same pencil-sketch style, the same size, the same place, the same simple detail. 

The teacher took one look at them, in their fragile, frozen tableau, and burst out: “Why does this shit always happen to me? Every goddamned semester..." He glared at the ceiling, then threw the rest of his papers onto the desk and told everyone to leave. “Read your syllabi, if you’re not too busy gazing into each other’s eyes."

No one really heard him. 

They were all watching Samantha, who kept touching Brayden like she was a cashmere sweater, soft and delicate and expensive. Brayden was too stunned to move. 

Phil was the last one out of the classroom, so he was the only one to witness their first kiss. Brayden reached for Samantha’s face with both hands, holding her for a second just to look at her, and then pulling her in close. 

After he left (closing the door very quietly behind him), his mind started wandering down the same paths he’d been treading since he was seven and his mother’s soul died. 

If it happened to them, would Samantha’s red sparrow turn into a skeleton with brittle bones and a sharp beak? Would it hide itself, perching behind Samantha’s ear until someone with the tattoo of a warm sun tempted it back out? 

Would Brayden just keep looking, her binoculars pointed at nothing? Would they change into glasses, or a telescope, or something else entirely? 

At eighteen, most of Phil’s friends still thought that finding your soulmate was the end of the story. It's what happened right before ‘Happily Ever After.’ That’s it, you’ve won, you’re done. Congratulations.

Phil had never really cared about his soulmark, which had settled when he was fourteen: Captain America’s shield, right over his heart. He liked it (although it was a tad embarrassing), but he spent more time thinking about what it could turn into than he did thinking about what it was. 

If he found his soulmate and they died, would the shield over his heart disappear? Or would it crack, or change, or stay exactly the same? It might change even if his soulmate didn’t die: despite what Hallmark would have them all believe, soulmates aren't always forever. 

He called himself a planner, and pretended that this obsession was a natural extension of his need for control. He planned his classes, his career, his relationships, his finances. And he planned, as best he could, for the life after this one. He wouldn’t turn into the ghost his mother became. He wouldn’t let himself be consumed. 

*

In the circus it seemed like everybody’s soulmarks were fucked up. 

The Russian rigger’s was on his palm, and it had a rope burn through the middle, rendering it a shapeless smear of blue and green. 

The Siamese twins had one soul mark, on their back, where the skin and muscle started to merge. He was new and curious, and they had been sweet. Their shared mark was the smallest and simplest Clint had ever seen. A little blue heart. Just an outline, a thin edge, in a pale blue. 

As if to make up for it, the lion tamer had two marks, and they were completely different. The first one was lines of numbers and letters trickling down the right side of his chest in stark black ink. No one had been able to figure out what they meant: if it was a code, or if the letters and numbers meant anything at all. The second mark was on his hip: a complete handprint, the whorls on the fingertips and the edges of the nails in perfect detail, all in light grey. 

Clint heard about them, but didn't see them until his fifth month with the circus. He was finally part of the Swordsman’s act, and during the show all the main performers shared changing rooms.

It took him another month to work up the courage to ask about it. 

“Do you think you’ll meet both of your soulmates at once?” Clint asked, sitting by the edge of the small tent that just housed the lions’ cages, trying to stay out of the way. “Or do you want to meet them one at a time?” 

The lion tamer sighed, stopped what he was doing, and sat down on a feed bucket at Clint’s side. Clint, startled at their new proximity, tried not to move. 

“They are a mystery to me," he said. Clint could never quite figure out his accent, which was mostly southern when he was relaxed (and really southern when he was drunk) but came out sharp and clipped around outsiders.

“I had a lot of different soulmarks growing up,” he continued. “First one that found a match was in the shape of a horse shoe. Fell in love with a rancher’s daughter. When I joined the army, she fell out of love with me.” He shrugged, like it didn’t mean anything anymore. “Then I met a guy when I was serving in Vietnam. I heard him singing in the showers, and felt my elbow kind of burn. The horseshoe had become a musical note.”

He looked down at Clint, who tried to shrink, not sure why this man trusted him enough to share this.

He scratched his nose, and got up, and gave the lions more water. Clint sat as still as he could, not wanted to remind the lion tamer that Clint was a goodfornothinglittleshit, not someone people held conversations with. 

Eventually his curiosity overcame his fear (as it so often did, so often to his detriment), and he asked, “What happened to him?” 

The lion tamer turned to look at him and Clint was pretty sure he did actually shrink that time. He had scary eyes sometimes. “He died.” He sat down next to Clint again, like a sack of feed, boneless and heavy. “The musical note turned into a knife. The war kept going. The war kept me going.” He sounded kind of sad about it. Clint already knew that he was a fighter (he had scarred knuckles and quick eyes), so he wasn’t more scared than usual. He shifted closer and bumped their shoulders together. A hug from a goodfornothinglittleshit to a man with war for a soulmate. 

“When did you get your new marks?” Clint asked. 

“The first time I saw a lion, the handprint showed up. The second one was a few months later, when I was getting trained in. Someone gave me a whip and told me to use it. When I decided not to, I felt the lines appear on my chest, like I was getting whipped myself.” Clint winced. He knew what that felt like. The welts on his back were still red and angry.

“I don’t deserve anyone,” the man continued, voice soft and rough, his accent like a song he had just remembered. “I already had two chances, and I fucked ‘em up. I don’t deserve this—these—but if there’s a chance, any chance at all, that there are two people out in the world who could love me? Then I’m in. I’ll stick around for that.” 

They sat there until someone started yelling for Clint, the goodfornothinglittleshit, to get back to work. 

“The way the Swordsman’s teaching you,” said the man who threw away whips and danced with lions, “it’s not right.” 

Clint nodded, already halfway out the tent. 

*

Everybody knew that the Black Widow’s soulmark was an hourglass. It was on the left side of her neck. Kind of hard to miss. Rumor had it that she’d already met and married and killed the person whose mark was a match. 

Clint was one of very few people left alive who found out that Natasha Romanov’s soulmark was not an hourglass. 

On her stomach, on the small, soft swell below her bellybutton, was a full-color drawing of a coffee mug. He'd been staying with her for almost half a year, working as her look-out and shadow, feeling like her partner, feeling safe.

They were lounging on the thin mattress he was using as a bed when he saw the coffee mug.

“Jesus fuck,” he yelped. “Are we soulmates? Because I love you, but I don’t love you half as much as I love coffee. Is that a fucking coffee mug? Natasha, what the shit even are our lives anymore.”

“It’s not coffee.” _Moron_ was implied. “It’s hot cocoa.” There was a slight blush on her cheeks. “There’s nothing better that coming inside after a long, cold day—and in Russia, all days are cold and long—and making a mug of hot cocoa. With real chocolate and milk, melted in the pan.” 

“Coffee’s better,” he said loyally, even though hot cocoa did sound really good. He tried to ignore the young, jealous part of him that was somehow disappointed that Natasha’s mark was sweet instead of bitter; it wasn’t meant for him. He hadn’t wanted it to be, not for more than a moment, but he was still disappointed. 

“Clint,” she said, leaning forward so their foreheads were pressed together, faces close. “What if I meet someone who makes me feel that way? What if that feeling—warm, and happy, and—and grateful—what if I’ll feel like that about a person one day?” The closest Clint had ever come to that was with Barney, and recently, with Natasha. But it wasn't the same. She turned away and laughed quietly at herself. “I sound stupid.” 

“No you don't,” Clint said. Sometimes being with Natasha made him feel like they were both children, ignorant about the same things, facing a world that was too big. “I think that’s kind of how marks work. Not all of them are that easy to decipher, but—but I think you’re going to find that one day, Tasha.” 

She scoffed and rolled her eyes. “It is a silly daydream," she said, a dismissal and a reprimand. "Love is for children."

Clint’s chest went tight for a moment, defensive and angry. “Tasha, if love was for children, then we'd know more about it. We were kids. And we weren't loved—not the way we should have been—and I don't think we really loved anyone either. I know I didn't.” He was saying too much.

Natasha would smack him for revealing his secrets without knowing what he wanted to get in return, but she was too busy trying to keep him from getting out of bed. “It’s an old phrase," she explained. "I used to find it comforting.” 

Clint nodded and let her pull him back onto the mattress. Eventually he relaxed, and again they were like puppies, tangled in the same blankets, fighting over the same pillow. 

“Clint?” she asked, when he was half-asleep. 

“Hmm?”

“Maybe one day, you’ll find someone that you love as much as you love coffee.” 

“Now that’s just crazy talk. It’s decaf for you until you apologize to the coffee gods.” 

*

The newest recruit to come to Phil's attention is an archer who had apparently been working with the Black Widow on some sidejobs in Russia that they weren’t supposed to know about, since according to the Russian government, they hadn’t happened. 

He was called down to handle disciplinary action, to find Barton in one interrogation room, and a level three agent in another. He started with the level three, Archibald Smith, thinking he'd be able to get a better version of the events. After fifteen minutes, he was willing to punch Archie himself.

“I just wanted him to say it,” Archie explained, sounding irritated but amused. “You know, teach him some manners. The guy just can’t take a joke.” 

“What did you want him to say?” 

“Well, his—his soul word.” Coulson let some more of confusion show, and Archie added, “It says ‘please.’” Coulson rocked back in his seat. A soul word? They were rare,on their own. Occasionally they were strings of words—quotes from poems and plays, lyrics, favorite sayings. Only about one person in every hundred-thousand had single words. "It's ironic, right?" Archie continued. "He's such a rude little shit, and then he's got a word like that. It doesn't make sense."

“Let me see if I'm understanding this correctly," Phil said slowly, letting the bite of anger seep into his words. "You thought it was your job to harass Probationary Agent Barton? You thought that you had the right to humiliate and violate one of your fellow soldiers because he was _rude_ to you?” 

Archie’s face went red with anger and shame. “Look, I’m not saying I’m not sorry, but the kid was asking for it. He’s cocky as shit, and he’s been pissing people off right and left. He needed to get taken down a few pegs.” 

Coulson glared at him until he started to shake with nerves.

He was getting really good at his glare. 

“The next time you decide to violate one of your fellow agents’ most deeply private experiences because you think they are ‘asking for that,’” he said, having to choke the words out, “then you better hope you leave the building, and SHIELD, and the state, before I can find you.”

Coulson left the room and slammed the door. Then he walked into the opposite interrogation room where Clint Barton was waiting. 

“I’ve been talking with Archie,” he said, settling in across from Barton. He was hunched over, nervous, guilty in a way that Archie hadn't been. “He tells me you don’t know how to take a joke.” Barton tensed so quickly that Coulson was impressed by his reflexes. “I’m going to tell you another joke, and you tell me if you can take it. So: one seasoned agent and one probationary agent go into a shooting range. The probie shows him up, pisses him off, starts some shit, and the seasoned field agent decides to assault him.”

Barton looked up at him through narrowed eyes.

“Do you get it?” Coulson asked. “Because I don’t.” He heaved a sigh. “Alas. I guess neither of us knows how to take a joke.” Barton actually cracked half a smile at that. “Maybe it’s the joke that’s the problem, and not you.” Barton just shrugged. “Let’s get you to medical. We can talk more after that about appropriate uses of violence in the workplace, who you can report harassment to, things like that. But you need a few bandaids first.” 

It’s not until later that Coulson let himself think about what Clint’s mark meant. He must get a lot of taunting and teasing, even though it was supposed to be private. It made him unnaccountably sad to think about the fact that the most important thing that Barton would ever say to the person he was supposed love forever was _please_. 

*

Loki’s spear took away his heart, his soul, and his soulmark.

Tasha gave it all back. It didn’t feel like it mattered. Apparently, Phil was dead. 

“I didn’t even get to see if his soulmark had changed after he met Steve,” Clint said, hiccupping through choked-back tears. “I figured the shield might have Steve’s signature on it by now.”

“You know Cap was never going to be his soulmate,” Natasha said softly. “Captain America was a symbol to Phil, not a person. They wouldn’t have fit like you and—”

Clint laughed, an ugly noise. “Tasha, me and—me and Coulson were never gonna be a thing. Phil and Steve had a better chance. Phil just—he didn’t—”

“He didn’t love you the way you loved him,” Tasha said softly.

Hearing the truth from someone else was like getting a roundhouse kick in the gut. “My mark went away during—during Loki,” he said. “I thought maybe it would come back as something different. Something that made sense, something that was—that was pretty, or strong, or—.” He closed his eyes. The laughter had stopped, but his lungs and stomach and jaw hurt with the effort of holding back tears. “When you told me Coulson had died, I looked for it, and I wished it wasn't there. I wished I could… Hell, I don’t even know.” 

“You wanted to mourn him like you’d mourn a soulmate, instead of a boyfriend,” she said. When all he could do in response was nod, she crawled into bed with him, stroking his hair.

He buried his head in her shoulder, and she pulled the blankets up over their heads. He cried, and she held him, and he wished they could be children again, wished love was a game, wished one of them would get a chance to win.

She put her hand over his wrist, over the skin that his wrist-guard had been chaffing against. _Please_ was there again, clearer and more heartbreaking than ever. 

*

The first thing that Clint Barton said to Phil Coulson after the battle of the Triskelion was ‘Please.’ 

“Please, Phil, be real. I swear to god, if you are a hallucination, I'm going to—” And then Phil was running towards him across the tarmac, a big-ass gun in one hand, the other outstretched. Phil stumbled halfway to him, a hand going to his chest. Clint sprinted the rest of the way, shocked out of stillness. “Did you get hit? Where’s the fucking medic—”

Phil shut him up by kissing him full on the mouth, in front of his team and the Avengers and probably Fury, who, despite the eyepatch, had eyes everywhere. Getting kissed wasn’t a bad way to end a conversation. In fact, it was his new favorite. 

“Phil,” he said, when he finally let Clint take a step back. “You…”

“I got stabbed,” Coulson said, one hand going back to his chest. “A little. But I got better.” 

“You ‘got stabbed a little’ the same way I ‘stubbed my toe’ in Uzbekistan.” 

“You broke your leg in three places.” 

“Exactly my point.” Somehow they had kept moving closer and closer together again, until Clint’s arms were wrapped around Coulson’s waist and Coulson’s chin was hooked over Clint’s shoulder and all he could see was the blur of Coulson’s favorite pinstripe suit, all that mattered was that Phil was alive, and back, and Clint’s. 

*

Phil was lying on his back, trying to catch his breath, when Clint--who had a truly beautiful case of sex hair--pointed at Phil's chest, and said, "Oh my god. You have got to be fucking kidding me.” 

“I know the scar looks bad,” he said. “I warned you.” 

“The scar is fine, the scar is—well it’s awful actually, but that’s not—Phil, were you even going to tell me?” 

“Tell you what?” 

Clint pointed at his chest, and Phil struggled back up into a sitting position. His limbs felt like noodles. He looked at where Clint was pointing, and saw—“Is that an arrow?” 

“It’s a purple arrow,” Clint said. He sounded almost manic. “Phil, why do you have a purple arrow on your chest?” 

“I didn’t even know it was there! It must have—” He’d felt a stab of pain over his heart when he was running towards Clint. When he heard Clint asking him, begging him to be real; to be alive. Apparently it hadn’t been a muscle twinge. 

“You didn’t even notice,” Clint said, in a teasing but accusatory tone of voice. “We become soulmates and you didn’t even notice?” 

“I should have noticed years ago,” Phil said. Clint looked away, his breath catching in his throat. “I’m sorry that I didn’t. I’m sorry I made you wait so long.” 

Clint looked scared. Phil couldn’t imagine how it must have felt, to be bonded to someone whose soul was so entirely separate from yours. 

“When I died,” he said slowly, “I had time to reevaluate some things. To think about who I was. The life I was leaving behind. And when I came back to life, I got—” Words weren’t enough. He gestured broadly, trying to encompass the world, and himself, and the impossible everything that was Clint. “I got all of this back. And the thing that I wanted back the most was you.” 

Clint’s smile was miniscule. “More than you wanted Captain America?” 

“Hey, his shield is supposed to be indestructible, but Loki’s spear went right through my last mark. I think it might not have been real.” 

Clint reached out and touched Phil’s soulmark for the first time. He gasped, energy and warmth and lust rushing through him. “This is really tacky looking,” Clint said. His eyes were wide and his lips were parted; he looked like he wanted Coulson to kiss him. 

“I’m in love with a really tacky guy,” he said. “Clint—can I kiss you?” 

Clint smiled, and nodded, and said, “Please.”


End file.
